By Elizabeth Kaye
While the massive began sinking, who might make it off alive? the 2 cousins who have been so desirous to see their first iceberg? The maid who desperately attempted to flee with the child in her care? The younger newlyweds who’d booked passage regardless of warnings to not?
One hundred years after that disastrous and emblematic voyage, Elizabeth Kaye unearths the intense, little-known tale at the back of one of many first lifeboats to depart the doomed send.
Told in actual time and within the real voices of survivors, Kaye’s poignant, pulse-pounding narrative comprises the tale of the Countess of Rothes, the wealthiest girl at the send, sure for California, the place she and her husband deliberate to begin an orange farm. It was once the Countess, wearing ermine and pearls, who took command of Lifeboat No. eight, rowing for hours during the black and icy water. within the phrases of 1 of the Titanic’s group, she was once “more of a guy than any we now have on board.”
At the guts of Kaye’s story is a budding romance among the Countess’s maid, Roberta Maioni, and the Titanic’s valiant instant operator, Jack Phillips. whereas Roberta made it correctly onto Lifeboat No. eight, maintaining not anything yet a photograph of Jack she had run again to her cabin to retrieve, he remained at the send, the place he may ship out the world’s first SOS sign. yet wouldn't it be bought in time to save lots of his life?
Surviving that fateful evening within the North Atlantic used to be now not the top of the saga for these aboard Lifeboat No eight. Kaye finds what occurred to every passenger and team member and the way the mythical maritime catastrophe haunted them forever.
A century later, we’re nonetheless captivated by means of the huge and its passengers. With its skillful use of survivors’ letters, diaries, and tales, “Lifeboat No. eight” provides a dramatic new bankruptcy to the continuing story.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A longtime contributor to “Esquire,” “Rolling Stone,” and “The long island Times,” Elizabeth Kaye is the writer of “Mid-Life: Notes from the midway Mark” and “Ain’t No the following day: Kobe, Shaq, and the Making of a Lakers Dynasty,” in addition to the Byliner unique “Sleeping with recognized Men.”
